Book Description

Excerpt from Letter to the Hon. Daniel Webster, on the Compromises of the Constitution Sir; - I have read, with earnest attention, both your speech on the subject of slavery, delivered in the Senate of the United States on the 7th of March last, and your letter of the 15th of May to the citizens of Newburyport. I am not an "Abolitionist," in the sectarian nor sectional sense of the term. That is: I have never belonged to the "Abolition party," the "Liberty party," nor the "Free Soil party;" but in my political principles, associations and actions, have always been thoroughly and steadfastly a Whig. For more than thirty years I have seriously contemplated slavery as a condition involving human rights and human sensibilities, affections and sufferings; and, for nearly as long a time, I have contemplated the slavery of these United States, in its relation to the political and civil institutions of our country. With the most fervent of the Abolitionists, I have desired that slavery might cease to exist on earth. With the most staunch adherent to constitutional pro-visions and guarantees, I have seen the difficulty of removing it by political action. At the same time, I have seen, with the vision of philosophical certainty, that the human soul, in its specific unity, identity and permanency, was gradually progressing in the development of its intellectual and moral attributes, and expanding itself to the comprehension of clearer, broader, and more accurately defined scientific truth concerning the nature, relations, and interests of man; and could not, by any possible conservative coercion, be confined in those forms and institutions which were the embodiments of the ideas and sentiments of an earlier state. I have seen, with anxiety and awe, that the slavery of our country could not remain as it was; that a change in the condition of the slave, in the relation between the master and the slave, and in the relation between the domestic institution of slavery and the political institution which constitutes our national unity, must inevitably take place; that no power of earth could prevent it; that no power of heaven would. I have seen that the only modes in which the inevitable change can take place, are: first, voluntary emancipation on the part of the slaveholders; second, political action in the exercise of assumed, not to say usurped, legislative authority; third, political disunion and civil war; and fourth, servile insurrection and war. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.